Well, I personally think that there is no correlation between luck and success. For me, success refers to a long-term achievement which demands two key factors: education and career. A person who wants to be successful will choose to pursue a degree from college or university. One will have to take several exams, and it is doubtful that someone will be so lucky that knowing nothing, will pass all the exams, and score high marks. Therefore, in order to be successful, one should work hard and prepare for the exam. Even if someone was unbelievably lucky enough to become a manager, not being qualified enough, he will be asked to resign in the near future because of his inability due the lack of knowledge, skill and experience to make the right decision. This is very common for our country because of the low development and regulations. But still, that is not luck, there are other factors which influence success in our country. So, my point is, you can still get a degree in our country on unfair and dishonorable way, but you will not succeed in life, because you will not obtain the necessary knowledge, neither discover you potentials or be able to work on them.

Now, lets talk about people generally accepted to be successful, which could probably be quantified by number of people envious of them. Just think about CEOs of Investment Banks, astronauts, rock stars, actors, models, professional footballers, and all other people who have jobs millions would die for. They are not in those places because they just got lucky or they got into right cliques. Most successful people have a strong work ethic and have spent many years trying to reach their goals. For example, most successful managers have spent many years in learning, obtaining knowledge through lower positions in a company. They are not just put there for no reason at all. They fully deserved it, and all other members in company are aware of that. For another example we can use a model, who maybe got lucky and was spotted by some modeling agent, but, that is just a short-term luck, and that has nothing to do with long-term success. If that person wants to stay in that business, one has to work hard and persist in that, or will eventually fail. Success in anything takes careful planning and persistency. So what this means is actually you have to prepare to be lucky. To make it clear I will provide an example. I once read about a successful man who was angry because his career was dismissed as the lucky one, so he wrote an article. He said that all his life he has listened to his fatherÐ²Ð‚â„¢s advice and that helped him a lot. One day he overheard two gentlemen talking about him saying how lucky he was, and how simple his life is. He was a little pissed to have his hard work be dismissed so easily as Ð²Ð‚ÑšLuckÐ²Ð‚Ñœ. The problem was that these two gentlemen did not know how he started his life, and they did not know how much time working hard he spent to get that luck they were talking about. He started by eliminating waste Ð²Ð‚â€œ getting rid of unnecessary expenses, and then he paid off his debts. After that it was all profit, he bought his first house, rearranged it, and after two years sold it to double his money. Maybe someone will still say that he got lucky to sell that house for twice amount of cash, but if he was not prepared for it, and did not have a plan, he would never earn that money. So my point is, he was smart Ð²Ð‚â€œ not lucky! After that, things got even better. Every time upon meeting someone new, he would ask the same question Ð²Ð‚Ñšwhat do you do?Ð²Ð‚Ñœ and then gave them his business card. His answer to this same question was Ð²Ð‚ÑšI run businessesÐ²Ð‚Ñœ. It was not a matter of pride or bragging - but it always makes people ask you questions. That opens the door for opportunities.

When you succeed, people will call you lucky. It is just how they justify their own failure to succeed. The fact that you have spent all your time preparing and planning for your success does not seem to count to them. So luck, I would say, is the preparation. If you are prepared, you will be lucky. If you are open to opportunity - opportunities will find you. To be lucky you have to be prepared. Luck does not happen by chance. Luck favors the prepared person and showers her love on the smart. In the end, I would say, in order to be successful in life you canÐ²Ð‚â„¢t depend on luck, you have to know what you want and persist in that, and obviously put a lot of hard work into it. You canÐ²Ð‚â„¢t just sit around and wait for something to happen, it simply never will!